my review of Heiroglyph - great work by @imaginationASU

Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future by Ed Finn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is amazing. It is a series of short stories (some quite long, others quite short) exploring science and ideas for the future. It is a collaboration between fiction authors and scientists, and comes out of Project Hieroglyph at the Arizona State University and their Centre for Science and the imagination.

I realise I may not be making this sound exciting yet. I wanted to read this book because Neal Stephenson was behind it, and I am a fan of his work. There are many wonderful stories in this volume. Not all of them are equally wonderful, but I am sure some people really loved ones I did not. At the end of each story there are story notes to show where the idea came from, sometimes there is a forum discussion you can look at to see the science explained (and it may be something which is not possible to do yet, but it has possibilities). Sometimes the writer was linked to a scientist so they could check the scientific accuracy of what they wrote about, other times they connected to research.

This book explores ideas, using accurate or potentially possible science. It also has great, amazing and wonderful stories in it. One of the things I noticed reading it was that many of the stories were joyful. There may have been tough things going on, but there was an undercurrent of joy and hope. This was lovely and a contrast to what I have been watching and reading lately. That joy and hope were strong is a great fit for planning a hopeful and positive future in a way which cares for people, and is inclusive an imaginative.

Some choice stories for me were Atmosphaera incognita by Neal Stephenson, The man who sold the moon by Cory Doctorow (this is a very joyful, hopeful story), A hotel in Antartica by Geoffrey A Landis, By the time we get to Arizona by Kathleen Ann Goonan, Elephant angels by Brenda Cooper, Entanglement by Vandana Singh, and Degrees of freedom by Karl Schroeder (exploring different governance structures). There are some wonderful reads not included, but it was starting to seem like I was including too many to be described as a selection.

This is going to be a tough one to place in a library because some people will read it for the science, and others for the ideas. Good cataloguing is essential (actually it always is essential). You can see how it is catalogued on Trove and the summary provides helpful keywords (but a lot of libraries don't add fiction to Trove and so miss out on this). I would have liked a more science oriented subject heading added as well.

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current music as part of the local studies collection

Denver Public Library has a local music site (you can listen to samples if you don't have a library card from them) as do Madison Public Library, Johnson County Library and others.

Music is important, and it has been harder to collect local content in this area.  These libraries have found a solution and it also makes it easy for people to listen to local musicians. This has many excellent local studies possibilities as well as current content.

I found out about these examples because I follow the Library as incubator project blog.

My review of The readers' advisory guide to genre blends by @megmcardle

The Readers' Advisory Guide to Genre Blends by Megan M. McArdle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is another in the excellent ALA Reader's advisory series. This book highlights overlaps in genres, and how each genre can often have ties to another one bringing crime and science fiction, romance and science fiction, horror and science fiction, for example together. There is a very good breadth of coverage, and some great ideas and practical advice about readers advisory skills and techniques, including when to suggest genre blends to people.

This book shows a great depth and breadth of knowledge, and there are helpful resources. As well whole of collection advisory is included bringing film and graphic novels. There is a useful (and short) bibliography.

Collecting, display and promotion are also covered. This is an excellent readers' advisory publication, and is well worth reading. You will may find your 'to read' list grow as a result of reading it, plus you may find a large number of genre blends already in the mix

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Winged Victory, story telling and local studies

This was in a flier which was distributed by the council

as was this
 
This article appeared in the local paper

You can read more about the Winged Victory ale here, here, and here, and more about the Winged Victory here, and the Marrickville ANZAC march here.

It struck me, that what I find most interesting in this is the story telling.  It is local history, connected to an international event, but through the new storytelling, interesting people in the past in a way they can connect to.

There is a lot of the commemoration of the centenary of the First World War which is not good, but this, because it is connecting to the local war memorial seems to work.  It is a very different depiction to that given in this very impressive and moving, then and now photograph series in the Guardian

Brilliant Gallipoli Then & Now from @GuardianAus http://t.co/zbTfUxMmZZ
— Paul Hagon (@paulhagon) April 23, 2015

but it still works.

You can see a Storify here showing how Winged Victory was depicted as part of Marrickville remembers.

The beermat
 
and the growler